chisa

Overdue for my twice-yearly journal!

I'm going to skip the summary of my life over the past 6 months except to say that I'm married, very happy, and doing well I'm hoping to do a lot more with photography this year, although this may or may not include much cosplay. If you're curious about my life, check out my blog: chigarden.com

Wai-Con 2012
Now that I'm back in Perth, I'll be attending Wai-Con for the first time in a few years! I've managed to wrangle a media pass, so I most likely won't be cosplaying, just lumbering around with a massive camera. I'll be upfront taking photos of the cosplay competition on both days, so hit me up for photos afterwards if you're competing! The rest of the time I'll also be wandering around taking photos of cosplayers, and am really hoping to squeeze in some quick photoshoots.

If you're doing an awesome cosplay and are interested in doing a quick photo shoot with me, please please please set up a time with me beforehand. If you find me and I'm free I'm happy to do impromptu shoots, but it's a million times better if we set up a time and place to meet, and I have some idea of what you're cosplaying and where around the con would be best to shoot it. It's really frustrating when I talk to people after and they say "I wish I had taken photos with you, I don't have any good photos!" and I say "I WISH THAT ALSO!". Just leave a comment here and we can chat about what you want

So, time for my regular 6 monthly DA journal entry...

Back in Perth!
The Boy and I have moved back to Perth! People keep asking me how I'm settling in, but as I'm living in the same suburb and am still close to the same people as before I left Perth 2 years ago, it feels a bit like we never left. I feel like it has highlighted how much I've changed in those two years though, both in good (more confidence!) and bad (extra kilos ;- ways. It's lovely to catch up with peoples though, and pick up relationships where they left off. If anyone wants to catch up, please get in touch!

Photography
If it isn't obvious from what I've been uploading lately, photography has pretty much kicked out all my other hobbies and made itself my main thing. Lately I've been feeling a bit down about my photography though - I see so much amazing work coming from other people, and wish I could be like that. It's easy to blame it on gear, but the fact is I just don't practice as much as those amazing people. I like to think I have some talent in some things - but photography isn't one of them. It's something I have to work at to be decent, so if I want to improve I need work harder.

That said, I'm intending to buy a newer camera anyway - for the higher ISO and video! I'm not sure it'll make a massive difference to most of my photography, but it'll definitely help taking food photos in dimly lit restaurants.

Here's a few recent lots of photos I've taken:
Perth Supanova www.facebook.com/media/set/?se…
Avatar: The Last Airbender www.facebook.com/media/set/?se…
Chinese New Year www.facebook.com/media/set/?se…

I'm up for doing photo shoots on weekends, so if you'd like some photos of your cosplay please let me know

Other Stuff
I don't really write much about my life on DA - if you're really interested, check me out on these other thingos:

Tumblr chibits.tumblr.com/
Twitter twitter.com/chisa
ChiGarden blog chigarden.com

I've been doing so much photography lately!

Photo5
I entered Canon's Photo5 comp www1.canon.com.au/worldofeos/p… this year for the first time, which was a bit of a challenge. I think I'm starting to get the hang of using my speedlite flash and the cable for using it off camera - although I've discovered that it's possible to buy (off brand) wireless sets for less than I paid for the cable, which doesn't even stretch very far!

I have a few of my entries here in my DA gallery, and you can take a look at the rest on Flickr www.flickr.com/photos/chisa/se… or Facebook www.facebook.com/album.php?aid….

Halloween
I've never really done anything for Halloween, but this year I've decided that any excuse to play dressups, take photos and have a themed party is a good one. Lacking the time to make a proper costume, I threw together bits I had already and made a hat and collar for a clown costume chibits.tumblr.com/post/145055… (photo by MrDarcy) for me and a hat, scarf and apron for an Iron Chef Sakai costume for The Boy jeffha.com/2010/11/halloween-2… (photo by me), which we wore to a friend's party. I ended up wearing the same thing the next day for a Halloween/cosplay photo shoot with MrDarcy, light-kitten, SirLeaderPlushie and a few others, which was awesome! Figures that I discover some willing models here in Canberra just as I'm preparing to leave it...

Photos from the shoot on Flickr www.flickr.com/photos/chisa/se… and Facebook www.facebook.com/album.php?aid….

Shooting with Allyeska Photography
I have a tutorial shoot with Jenny of Allyeska Photography allyeska.com coming up, which I'm super excited about! I tagged along to one of her pinup client shoots at her home studio to observe, and am now very inspired... and wishing I had more lighting equipment and space to set up a studio! Someday perhaps?

Facebook
In case you haven't gotten all my pimping - I've made a Facebook page for my photography/art/craft/design/creative stuff www.facebook.com/pages/Canberr… to keep it separate from my personal Facebook account, which I'm trying to keep to close friends only. Go 'like' it!

The Boy and I have just returned from a far-too-short ten days in Perth! It was fabulous catching up with people, although due to the short time we had and amount to be done in that time, I didn't get to see everyone Next time I fly back over I think I'll have to stay longer and reduce the amount of work I take with me, because I spent half the time sleep deprived, stressed, and mildly hungover.

I'm Learnding!

Whilst in Perth I managed to squeeze in a cosplay shoot with Risachantag (cosplaying Azula and photographing) and rallamajoop (cosplaying Syaoran)! Photography is a bit of a steep learning curve for me, and between various factors (all on my end, Lisa and Cathy were fantastic) I'm really not at all in love with the photos that I took. The photos can be seen here: www.facebook.com/album.php?aid… . I think a few came out okayish, but when I first looked over them I felt a little bummed that I wasn't improving in photography as fast as I wanted to. I am, afterall, a noob at photography (particularly photographing people!) though, and I guess I can't expect to instantly produce magical photos without practice and study. I'm thankful Risachantag and rallamajoop were so patient with me!

I feel like I learned some really important things though - probably bleeding obvious to most people, but I'm going to put them down anyway so I remember for next time:

• Midday lighting sucks. I know, I should know this, but it was the only time we had to spare and I figured early afternoon might be okay... it wasn't really. The shadows in the trees and shrubbery as well as on the cosplayers were really harsh and distracting, and I don't really know how to counter it in post-processing.
• Scope out the location beforehand. Unfortunately there was some construction going on at the chinese gardens at Murdoch University, which reduced the space we had to work with and left us with some ugly fencing in backgrounds! Checking out the place beforehand isn't always possible though (it wasn't for this one), so we just did the best we could.
• I need to figure out how to work my reflector better. It's brand new and I don't have a clue O_o I mean I get the general idea, but I struggled to get it to create nice lighting without it looking unnatural or blinding the poor model. Using it to filter light through the white bit worked lovely on the dappled shade for closeups though.
• Shallow depth of field looks so much prettier with busy backgrounds. With so much sunlight I thought a longer depth of field would work better to get some background in focus, but between the busy background elements and harsh lighting it actually ended up quite distracting. The few I got with fairly shallow depth of field look a lot nicer.
• Sleep helps. Taking photos in the sun on not much sleep, not much water and a slight hangover does not bode well.
• Have someone explain the 'expose for ambient light, flash to fill' concept before the shoot, not after. It makes sense now, and it could have been useful!

The other thing I learned is that I'm utterly hopeless at posing. In my head I'm doing something different to what I'm actually doing, and photos of me turn out absolutely rubbish (through my fault, not the photographer's). I suppose this is something that can get better with practice, but part of it is body image issues, and I definitely feel more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it. I think I need to get a bit more comfortable in front of the camera and with myself, because I want my wedding photos next year to actually look nice!

Life is back to normal here in Canberra so you probably won't be seeing any more cosplay photos from me for a while - unless anyone wants to do a shoot here?

Check out the full roundup on my blog: The Shoots | The Dancing | The Cosplay | The Table

Here it is in dot points!

• I found that the passive aggressive approach was not going to get the traders coordinator to deal with things, so had to go somewhat aggressive to get things sorted :S
• Sold stuff on Friday with Risachantag and on Saturday with cwutieangel
• As discovered previously at SMASH, an anime convention is not the ideal place to sell original handmade stuff. Made enough to pay for the trip though, even if I had to halve my usual prices
• We had the coolest (and extremely talented) table neighbours: Adre-es on one side and Ms Rosek on the other
• I cosplayed Katara on both of these days (different versions) - awse to see so many Avatar TLA fans, and some other Avatar cosplayers too!
• Found out about Avatar: The Legend of Korra avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Avatar:_… - SO EXCITED!
• Took a ton of photos of cosplayers around the con www.facebook.com/album.php?aid…
• On Sunday I ran around in what I'm calling a 'lolita inspired outfit' and did some quickie photoshoots outside with some really incredible cosplayers www.facebook.com/album.php?aid…
• Still learning with the whole photography thing, but definitely getting better at ordering people around at least? (this is a good thing)
• Also took videos of random people dancing, and put together a lame little video www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NQdDm…
• It was awesome seeing some old friends again and making new ones! Much love to everyone!